Ana
Fereira:
…I would
like to know, since yesterday you spoke to the Brazilian bishops about the
participation of women in our Church... I would like to understand
better, what this participation of us women in the Church would be like.
Also, what do you think of women’s ordination? What should our position
in the Church be like?
Pope
Francis:
I would
like to explain a bit more what I said about women’s participation in the
Church. It can’t just be about their acting as altar servers, heads of
Caritas, catechists… No! They have to be more, profoundly more, even
mystically more, along with everything I said about the theology of
womanhood. And, as far as women’s ordination is concerned, the Church has
spoken and said: “No”. John Paul II said it, but with a definitive
formulation.
That door
is closed, but on this issue I want to tell you something. I have said
it, but I repeat it. Our Lady, Mary, was more important than the
Apostles, than bishops and deacons and priests. Women, in the Church, are
more important than bishops and priests; how, this is something we have to try
to explain better, because I believe that we lack a theological explanation of
this. Thank you.
Press conference on plane
returning from WYD Rio
Reflection – Another day, more controversy! The Pope
certainly didn’t back off from one second from any of these difficult and
painful issues. He is a man without fear and without guile, it seems to me.
A few days ago
I blogged about his statement that the Church needed a theology of woman, and
threw out some of my ideas about what that could mean, ideas based on the
writings of Joseph Ratzinger. I don’t really have anything to add to what I
wrote there, at least not at this point.
So here we
have the specific question of woman and priesthood. Pope Francis reiterates the
definitive teaching of the Church, clarified by Pope John Paul II: that door is
closed. But with God, doors are not closed unless other doors are open. God
never says no unless there is a deeper, better yes on offer. I think the
controversy over the ordination of women has been ultimately a distraction
preventing us from articulating this deeper yes, this deeper vision, this
deeper (as the Pope says, even mystical) theology of womanhood.
It is not
unlike the controversy over same sex marriage (just in case I haven’t made
everyone mad at me this week yet). Now, to affirm the goodness and dignity of
gay and lesbian people, we are told we must affirm their right to get married
to their partners. I believe, firmly and passionately, that there is a deeper
goodness and dignity, a positive vision of holiness and beauty, in calling the
LGBT community to chastity and continence, that this is a deep and total ‘yes’
to their personal dignity and God-given vocation. But that is a voice that goes
unheard these days, and in fact is bizarrely and illogically characterized as
‘hate speech’.
However, that
is an aside. Let’s talk about this rather strong statement that ‘women, in the
Church, are more important than bishops and priests.’ Hurray! I love this kind
of thing. If we take this seriously, grant that the Pope means this and is not
just saying it to make women feel better or some such nonsense, then it is a
radical statement.
We live in a
world obsessed with power: who has it, who doesn’t, how to get it, how to keep
it. The most important thing imaginable is to be the boss, the one pulling the
strings, whether being the boss occurs through accumulating money, occupying
this or that position, or manipulating others through one’s personal gifts and
abilities. The subtle hegemony of Marxist thought is evident is our
unquestioning assumption that life is nothing but a power struggle and the only
relevant concern is who wins, who loses.
By saying that
office in the Church (which is the ‘power’ structure in Catholicism) is not as
important as this mysterious something else represented by ‘woman’, the Pope is
radically overturning the whole model of life-as-power-struggle, the core good
of life being the accruing of power to oneself.
As I said a few
days ago, I believe this theology of woman is a theology of the primacy of
radical receptivity, radical responsivity, radical relationality, radical and
total and all-encompassing passivity which paradoxically draws us into the
total activity of God’s Spirit in the world. Mary is the great icon of this,
but the icon is reproduced in every woman in her very physicality and the
psycho-sociological modes and structures woman brings into every situation.
I know it’s
more complicated than that, and a blog post can only go so far in addressing
those complexities. But don’t forget, I live in a mixed community of men and
women, and the feminine genius and gift in the Church and the world is not a
remote abstraction to me. I see it at work every day, in a multiplicity of
beautiful ways: my MH sisters.
This is
actually so important to me (I believe MH in many ways can serve as a model of
Church life in this male-female, lay-priest dynamic) that I want to come back
to it tomorrow. This post is long enough (and it’s time for me to go to
prayers!). Tomorrow I want to talk more about the specific statement ‘women are
more important than priests.’ (Hurray!) A demain.